Pepsi has spent decades trying to be the drink of the young generation, from the Pepsi Generation of the 1960s to “The Choice of a New Generation” in the 1980s. In 2017 it tried to speak to a generation that was marching in the streets. It lasted one day.
The ad
The spot, officially “Live for Now Moments Anthem,” was a play on a “Live for Now” campaign Pepsi had run since 2012. It ran about two and a half minutes, set to the song “Lions” by Skip Marley.
Model Kendall Jenner is in the middle of a photo shoot when a crowd of young, smiling marchers passes by carrying signs with vague slogans. She pulls off her blonde wig, wipes off her lipstick and joins them. The march reaches a line of police officers. Jenner takes a can of Pepsi from a cooler, walks up to an officer and hands it to him. He drinks; the crowd cheers; a photographer captures the moment and celebrates.
The backlash
The ad was released on April 4, 2017, and the reaction was immediate. Critics said Pepsi had borrowed the imagery of real protests against police brutality, including the Black Lives Matter movement, and reduced them to a backdrop for selling soda. The final scene closely echoed “Taking a Stand in Baton Rouge,” a widely shared 2016 photograph of protester Iesha Evans standing calmly as armored police moved to arrest her.
The suggestion that a celebrity and a soft drink could smooth over those tensions struck many viewers as tone-deaf at best. Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., wrote: “If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi.”
Pepsi pulls it
On April 5, one day after release, Pepsi stopped the rollout and removed the ad from its YouTube channel, where it had drawn at least 1.3 million views in two days. The company said: “Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize.” It added that it also apologized for putting Jenner in that position.
How did this get made?
The ad was produced by Creators League Studio, PepsiCo’s in-house content team, rather than an outside agency. Many observers argued that was part of the problem: a small group working inside the company, without outside voices to challenge the concept, can miss what an audience will see. Some marketers pointed to it as a case study in groupthink.
Why it failed
- It used a serious cause as a prop. Protest imagery carries real history and real pain; a brand borrowing it needs a real connection to the cause, which Pepsi did not have.
- It offered a trivial solution. The story implied a soda could resolve conflicts between protesters and police.
- The messenger didn’t fit. A wealthy celebrity model resolving a protest undermined the message it claimed to celebrate.
- Nobody said no. An in-house process with no outside test audience let an obvious risk reach the public.
Legacy
The ad became shorthand for “woke-washing”: brands using social movements to sell products without meaningful commitment. It was parodied in 2022 on the TV series The Boys. It is often contrasted with Nike’s “Dream Crazy” ad featuring Colin Kaepernick, which also took a position on protest but was built around an athlete who had paid a personal price for his stance.
For Pepsi, a brand that had built its identity on reading the mood of young people, the episode was a clear sign of how easily that instinct can misfire.